Myths and reality of the Nazi space rocket

Seventy years ago this month, one of the second world war’s scariest weapons began to rain terror on London. But the V-2 was also the world’s first spacecraft

ON THE drizzly evening of Friday 8 September 1944, Londoners heard the first explosions of a new and terrifying weapon. They had endured the pulsing drones of the V-1 flying bombs, nicknamed buzz bombs or doodlebugs, launched by the Germans in June that year. But now a bigger, faster weapon was raining down.

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This was the V-2, or Vengeance Weapon Two as it was called by Josef Goebbels’s Nazi Propaganda Ministry. It carried a 1-tonne warhead, and the fact that the rocket was silent, and so often hit without warning, made it devastating psychologically as well as physically.

The V-2 was also the first ballistic missile, pioneering the large liquid-propellant rocket engines that form essentially the same technology that has since taken probes to the outer solar system, powered nuclear missiles and put humans on the moon.

Few of these missiles exist today, but a V-2 rocket, measuring more than 14 metres high, has taken centre stage in the £40 million atrium at London’s Imperial War Museum. The rocket is among diverse artefacts demonstrating the iconography of Britain’s past conflicts – including a Spitfire plane, a car mangled by a bomb during the recent Iraq conflict, and standard army biscuits.

Michael Neufeld, curator of the V-2 exhibition in Washington, is a historian and author of The Rocket and the Reich. He says the V-2 was a technological breakthrough. “It was the first large-scale rocket powered by liquid propellant – liquid oxygen and 75 per cent alcohol fuel,” he says. “It could reach the edge of space. And in many ways it left a dual legacy – it was the origin of cold war intercontinental ballistic missiles, but also of space-launch vehicles.”

The V-2 had a simple guidance system using graphite jet vanes to deflect the exhaust and air vanes to control roll. “The rocket launched vertically with its engine firing for only a minute,” says Neufeld. “The inertial guidance system in the nose was controlled by gyroscopes. It tipped the rocket over until it was at an angle of about 45 degrees, and travelling at 5600 kilometres per hour. The system had an accelerometer to ensure the engine cut out at the right speed.”

It tumbled in space but when it re-entered the atmosphere, its fins kept the nose pointing forwards like a dart. Because it travelled faster than the speed of sound, it couldn’t be heard until it hit – hence the terrifying silence.

Myths abound, however, about its role during the war. “The Germans lost much of their bomber force fighting the Soviets, and V-1s and V-2s were deployed as substitutes. But they could never deliver the destructive power of a fully laden, four-engined bomber,” says Neufeld. “One of the big clichés about the V-2 and, indeed, the V-1,” he adds, “is that they came too late to change the course of the war. Germany lost the war when it invaded the Soviet Union and Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, pushing the US into the conflict. Now, if the V-2s had carried nuclear warheads, that could have changed everything. As it was, they were terrifying psychological weapons but inefficient, inaccurate and expensive.”

More than 6000 were made, but fewer than 3500 were launched and around 2000 hit their targets. The sad irony, says Neufeld, is that as many as 12,000 prisoners in concentration camps may have died making the V-2 compared with the 5500 or so who died in the direct hits.

Misconceptions about the V-2 aside, one fact remains poignant&colon; seventy years ago, and with very different intent, the world’s first spacecraft took flight.

Seventy years ago, and with very different intent, the world’s first spacecraft took flight

This article appeared in print under the headline “Out of a clear sky…”